International Federation ofClassification Societies
Newsletter

President: Akinori Okada

Number 56

October, 2017
Editor:

The
International
Federation
ofClassification Societies, founded in 1985, iscomposed of:
Associação Portuguesa de Classificação e
Análise de Dados, British Classification
Society, Central American and Carribean
Society of Classification and Data Analysis,
The Classification Society, Classificationand Multivariate Statistics Group of the
Hungarian
Statistical
Association,
Gesellschaft für Klassifikation, Greek
Society of Data Analysis, Irish Pattern
Recognition and Classification Society,Japanese Classification Society, Korean
Classification
Society,
MoroccanClassification Society, Société FrancophonedeClassification,
Multivariate
Data
Analysis Group of the South African
Statistical Association,
Multivariate
Statistics and Classification Group of the
Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations
Research, Società Italiana di Statistica,
Statistical Society of Slovenia, Vereniging
voor Ordinatie en Classificatie and Sectionof Classification and Data Analysis of thePolish Statistical Society.
The IFCS is a non-profit, non-politicalscientific organization, the aims of which
are to further classification research.
Among other activities, the IFCS organises abiennial conference, and supports twojournals: Advances in Data Analysis andClassification
andtheJournalofClassification.

IFCS Homepage: http://www.ifcs.info

Paul McNicholas

Contents
Words from the IFCS President
News from the IFCS Secretary
News from the IFCS Publication Officer
Report on IFCS 2017
Report from IFCS Awards Committee
IFCS-2019: First Announcement and Call for
PapersCall for Nominations: Classification Society
Distinguished Dissertation Award
News from CLAD
News from the JCS
News from The Classification SocietyNews from SKAD
News from GfKl
Cluster Analysis Benchmarking: Two IFCS
Challenges
Fourth German-Polish Seminar on Data
Analysis and Applications
Fourth European Conference on Data Analysis
Upcoming Conferences and Meetings

Words from the IFCS President
The IFCS biennial conference, IFCS 2017, washeld from August 8 through 10 in Tokyo, Japanand was a terrific success. At the conference, a
total of 256 papers were presented. The total
number of participants was 316 from 26
countries; this includes 189 participants from six
Asian countries, 144 of who came from Japan.
Highly distinguished researchers gave fiveplenary talks. I would like to thank the Scientific
Program Committee and the Local Organizing
Committee for organizing such a successful
conference. I especially thank Tadashi Imaizumi,
Sadaaki Miyamoto, Yoshiro Yamamoto, andFumitake Sakaori for their excellent contributions
in creating a wonderful scientific program as wellas other marvelous activities at the conference.
My appreciation also goes to the IFCS Awards
Committee for their magnificent work inchoosing award laureates．I especially appreciate
the work of Shizuhiko Nishisato, who chaired the
IFCS Awards Committee with great distinction.
The IFCS Research Medal for outstanding
research achievements, Chikio Hayashi Awards,
theStudent/Postdoctoral
Fellow
Paper
Competition and Travel Award, and the Helgaand Wolfgang Gaul Stiftung Award wereawarded to six excellent researchers. Helga andWolfgang Gaul Stiftung Award was donated by
Helga Gaul and Wolfgang Gaul, and this is theinaugural year of the award. I express myheartiest appreciation to Helga Gaul and
Wolfgang Gaul in this regard.

Lubbe as well as Nema Dean, the former
Treasurer of the IFCS who served until the end of
2016. I really enjoyed working with them, and I
would like to thank them again for theirencouragement and friendship. My successor will
be Berthold Lausen who is a highly competentperson and will be an excellent President. I
believe the Federation will continue to succeed incontributing to new developments in the field,
which we are changing and are going to continue
to change.

Overall, our experience of having the conference
fee in Japanese Yen was positive and it protectedagainst the risk caused by the fluctuation in othercurrencies, most particularly the Euro and the US
Dollar. For example, we saw about 20% decreaseof the value of the Euro and the US Dollar to theJapanese Yen from 2015 to 2016. Our experiencesuggests that using the local currency might be agood option for future IFCS meetings not held
inside the Eurozone or the United States. I would
like to take this opportunity to say that from 2014
to 2016 the impact factor of Journal ofClassification increased from 0.727 to 3.083, andthat of Advances in Data Analysis andClassification increased from 1.026 to 2.326.
These figures indicate the very high quality of
papers appearing in the two journals. I would liketo extend my congratulations to the respective
editorial boards. The next IFCS Conference,
IFCS-2019, will take place August 26-29, 2019 at
Thessaloniki, Greece. The Conference Chair is
Theodore Chadjipadelis at the Aristotle
University of Thessalonik. The Greek Society ofData Analysis will host the IFCS 2019. I hope to
express heartiest thank to the Greek Society ofData Analysis and to Giannoula Florou, thepresident of the Greek Society of Data Analysis,for hosting the IFCS-2019.

News from the IFCS Secretary

This is my last contribution to the Newsletter as
the President of the International Federation ofClassification Societies because my term as the
President (2016-2017) is coming to an end. It has
been a privilege and a pleasure to serve as the
President over the past two years. I express mydeepest appreciation for the support and help
given by the other members of the Executive
Committee: Maurizio Vichi, Berthold Lausen,
Christian Hennig, Paul McNicholas, and Sugnet

Akinori Okada
IFCS President

After the IFCS conference in Tokyo, on which
there were meetings of the Executive Committee(EC) and the IFCS Council, the EC met again on
1 November. At the Council meeting, the EC had
proposed amended changes to the IFCS
Constitution and Election Rules. An earlier
version had not found enough votes in theCouncil (although there had not been any
negative votes). The number of Representatives
present at the Council meeting did not suffice todecide Constitution changes, and therefore thechanges again were not decided. The EC is now
working on a further amended version that will be
proposed to the Council for discussion soon.
There was already some discussion at the Council
meeting, and as a result of this, the new proposal
will only ask members of the Election Committee
to be Council members at the time at which they
become members of the Election Committee.
Also fixing the minimum number of 150
members of a Member Society required forhaving two Council Representatives (and paying
higher IFCS dues) in the Constitution will be partof the proposal.
There will soon be elections of a new President
Elect and a new Publication Officer. Apart from
this, the EC discussed the IFCS-2019 in
Thessaloniki, particularly potential chairs of the
Scientific Programme Committee, and potential
hosts of IFCS-2021. Another project is a newgeographical visualization of the IFCS Member
Societies and potentially their members. Ideas forthis will be discussed in future meetings. Please
note that the IFCS Directory needs to contain
updated information on the Societies' Presidents,
Treasurers, Council Representatives (names,email adresses and terms of office). Any change
should be emailed to the IFCS Secretary(c.hennig@ucl.ac.uk).
Currently
some
information is outdated despite having sent
reminder emails; can I please ask thecorresponding Societies to send me the updated
information? With all the best wishes for thefestive season,
Christian Hennig
IFCS Secretary

News from the IFCS Publication Officer
First of all, I would like to extend my personalgratitude to Tadashi Imaizumi and his team fororganizing an unforgretable IFCS meeting inTokyo. I write this as I come to the end of mysecond, and final, term as IFCS Publication
Officer. This will be my last newsletter and I am
grateful to all of those who have contributed to it.
I have thoroughly enjoyed working on behalf of
IFCS over the past six years, and I would like toextend my thanks to everyone who has made it anenjoyable experience. I am looking forward to myterm as President of The Classification Society,which begins in January, and I hope to see you at
CS 2018 in New York next June!
Paul McNicholas
IFCS Publication Officer

Report on IFCS 2017
The last IFCS conference, IFCS-2017, was hosted
by the Japanese Classification Society at
Takanawa Campus of Takai University in Tokyo,
it was held from August 7th to August 10th.
Yoshiro Yamamoto (Tokai University) chaired
the Local Organizing Committee and I (TamaUniversity) chaired the Scientific Program
Committee, with Sadaaki Miyamoto (Tsukuba
University) as the vice-chairperson. I was
honoured to do this having previously served theJapanese Classification Society as President. Thisconference saw over 316 participants from acrossthe country and from around the world,
specifially 189 participants from six Asian
counties. As usual, the Conference program wasorganized over plenary invited sessions,specialized sessions and contributed paper
sessions. Tomoyuki Higuchi (Japan), Marieke E.
Timmerman (The Netherlands), Irini Moustaki(UK), Cinzia Viroli (Italy) and Christian Hennig(UK) delivered plenary talks. One further plenary
session, the IFCS Presidential Address, wasdelivered by Akinori Okada (Japan). The total
number of contributions was 256, including 16
posters. The efforts of our colleagues of theJapanese Classification Society made thisconference such a success. The high quality of thecontributions was assured by the work of all
members of the Scientific Program Committee.
Our deepest gratitude goes to all of them. Special
thanks must be addressed to Fumitake Sakaori(Chuo University) who has supported theparticipants via the IFCS 2017 conference
website. A post-proceedings volume will beedited by Tadashi Imaizumi, Akinori Okada,
Sadaaki Miyamoto, Fumitake Sakaori, Yoshiro
Yamamoto, and Maurizio Vichi and will be
published by Springer in the prestigious series on
Studies in Classification, Data Analysis andKnowledge Organization (ISSN: 1431-8814).
Authors are invited to submit their contributions
via
theconference
websitehttp://ifcs.boku.ac.at/_conference/index.php/ifcs2017/ifcs2017. The deadline for submitting up to
12 pages is November 30th.
Tadashi Imaizumi

Report from IFCS Awards Committee
This was the inaugural year of the Helga andWolfgang Gaul Stiftung Award. Therefore, theawards committee handled this award plus the
IFCS Research Medal, the Chikio Hayashi
Award, and Student/Postdoctoral Fellow Paper
Competition and Travel Award. The awardscommittee consisted of Hans-Hermann Bock
(Germany), Jean Diatta (France), Shizuhiko
Nishisato (Canada, Chair), Stanley Sclove (USA),
Iven Van Mechelen (Belgium) and Donatella
Vicari (Italy), with Christian Hennig (United
Kingdom, IFCS Secretary) as ex-officio member.
The committee chose the following award
winners:• IFCS Research Medal: Geoffrey J.
McLachlan (Australia).
• Chikio Hayashi Award: Michio Yamamoto(Japan), Renato Cordeiro de Amorim (United
Kingdom), and Jeffrey L. Andrews (Canada).
• Helga and Wolfgang Gaul Stiftung Award:
Johané
Nienkemper-Swanepoel(SouthAfrica).

Student/Postdoctoral
Fellow
Paper
Competition and Travel Award: Mr. Kohei
Uno (Japan).
At the awards ceremony in Tokyo, chaired by
Yasumasa Baba, the benefactors Helga andWolfgang Gaul presented their first award to thewinner. The chair of the awards committee also
introduced to the audience the winner of the
BRACA award, Corinna Ernst (Germany) who
received the award at the annual meeting of the
GfKl in February 2017. The awards committee
forwarded a number of recommendations about
the procedures and criteria for awards decisions
to the President and the Executive Committee of
IFCS for future consideration.
•

Shizuhiko Nishisato

IFCS 2019: First Announcement andCall for Papers
The 2019 conference of the International
Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) will
be held at Makedonia Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki,
Greece from August 26 to 29, 2019. The
conference theme will be ‘Data Analysis andRationality in a Complex World’. On August 26,
pre-conference workshops will be held. The
conference itself will start on August 27 in themorning, and will close on August 29 with a fullday conference program and a conference dinner.
The conference will include a President’s invited
session and a Presidential address, invited
presentations, invited and contributed sessions,and poster sessions. The following awards andmedals ceremony will be scheduled at theconference.
• Helga and Wolfgang Gaul Stiftung Award(age < 30)• Chikio Hayashi Award (age 30–35)• IFCS Research Medal for outstanding
research achievements (age > 35)• Student/Postdoctoral
Fellow
Paper
Competition and Travel Award (age 22–29)
Conference Venue
The conference venue will be confirmed in March2018 and details will be provided in the next
IFCS Newsletter.
Conference Topics
Contributed
papersfromscholarsandpractitioners are invited on any of the topics

below as well as on related issues: Data Analysis
and Classification in the Natural Sciences,
Engineering, Medicine and Biology / Banking
and Finance / Bioinformatics and Biostatistics /Biomedical Data Analysis and Imaging /Business and Industry / Classification,
Discriminant Analysis, and Supervised Learning /Clustering and Unsupervised Learning / Complex
Event Processing / Data Analysis in Archaeology/ Databionics / Exploratory Data Mining / Formal
Concept Analysis / Functional Data Analysis /Geospatial Planning / Graphics and Vision /High-Dimensional
DataandDimension
Reduction / Image Analysis and Computer Vision/ Information Retrieval and Library Science /Impact of Technical Revolution, Globalization on
Statistical Process / Knowledge Discovery /Linguistics and Musicology / Machine Learning
and Pattern Recognition / Marketing andManagement / Medical and Health Sciences /Neural Networks and Deep Learning /Psychology and Educational Sciences / Social
Network Analysis / Sparse Modeling / Statistical
Data Analysis, Statistical Models and Model
Selection / Swarm Systems / Symbolic Data
Analysis / Text Mining, Web Mining, andOntology Learning / Visualization
In addition, plenary lectures and conference
sessions will focus on the following topics:a) theoretical aspects and applications of data
analysis methods and classification methodology
in various scientific fields, b) organizing,
analysing and visualizing official data, and c)needs and insights of statistical education.
Particular emphasis will be placed on
multidisciplinary approaches for social and healthsciences, mathematics, informatics, humanities,
and science.
Submission of Abstracts
Titles and abstracts should be submitted anduploaded via the conference website http://ifcs.gr
by April 15, 2019. All abstracts will be subject toa peer review process. Notifications of acceptancewill be sent by May 15, 2019.
Important Dates§ November 1, 2018 Start early bird registration§ April 15, 2019: Deadline for abstract
submission§ April 15, 2019: Deadline for early bird
registration

§
§
§
§
§

May 15, 2019: Notification of acceptance for
abstract submission
May 31, 2019: Deadline for standard
registration
June 30, 2019: Deadline for late registration
August 26, 2019: Pre-conference workshops
August 27-29, 2019: IFCS-2019 conference

Publications Related to the Conference
We are planning to publish a post-conference
proceedings. The tentative schedule is as follows:§ October 15, 2019: Deadline manuscript
submission§ December
15, 2019: Notification of
acceptance§ February
15, 2020: Deadline revisedmanuscript submission§ June 15, 2020: Publication and shipment
Conference Fees
Early Bird
until May 15,
2019Standard

Late
after May 15,
2019

IFCS
Societies
Member*

260,00 €300,00 €340,00 €NonMember

340,00 €380,00 €420,00 €Student

150,00 €150,00 €150,00 €* IASC members are entitled to IFCS societies members reduced fees.

Contact Address
Theodore Chadjipantelis, Aristotle University ofThessaloniki, School of Political Sciences,
University Campus, 54625, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Email:
ifcs2019@polsci.auth.gr.
Further
Information can be found on the conference
website http://ifcs.gr.
Submission of Abstracts
Titles and abstracts should be submitted anduploaded via the conference website http://ifcs.gr
by 15 April 2019. We look forward to seeing youin Thessaloniki in August 2019.
Theodoros Chatzipantelis

Call for Nominations: Classification
Society Distinguished Dissertation
Award
Each year, the Classification Society offers aDistinguished Dissertation Award (the Award,

hereafter) for an outstanding Ph.D. dissertation on
the theme of clustering, classification, or relatedareas of data analysis, encompassing associatedtheory and/or applications. The 2018 Award
totals US$500 in book vouchers from Chapman
and Hall/CRC Press and the winner will be
invited to make a presentation in a special session
at the 2018 Classification Society Annual
Meeting, which will be held at Stony Brook
University from June 20-23. The Classification
Society will cover travel expenses to the 2018
Annual Meeting of at most US$1,000 for a North
American-based Award winner or at most
US$1,500 for an Award winner based elsewhere.
Criteria for nomination for the Award include: themain topic of the dissertation is in classification,clustering or a closely related area; thedissertation contains innovative work intheory/methodology and/or or innovative or welldeveloped application(s); and the literature
review is thorough. To be eligible for nomination,a Ph.D. dissertation must have been successfullycompleted – including successful defense –within the calendar year 2017. Nominations may
be made by the dissertation author, supervisor, or
related person, and must be sent by email. A
nomination must include contact information for
the nominator and nominee (if different), a URL
where an online copy of the dissertation can beaccessed by the members of the Award
Committee, and an electronic (e.g., scanned)
cover letter, written and signed by the nominator,
stating the date of final completion of the Ph.D.
dissertation and outlining why the dissertation
merits the award. The nominator must also
arrange for two external referee reports to be sent
directly to the chair of the Award committee. If
possible, the referees should be arms-length fromthe dissertation author and their supervisor. Cover
letters should include full bibliographic details forany published papers, proceedings, bookchapters, or similar scholarly material that havearisen from the dissertation. For non-English
language dissertations, nominators are requested
to provide an extended abstract in English and,
where relevant, to highlight any papers,
proceedings, book chapters, or similar scholarlymaterial associated with the dissertation that havebeen published in English.
The 2018 Award Committee comprises:• Stephen France, Mississippi State University,
United States;

Bobby Gramacy, Virginia Tech, United States;
and• Fionn Murtagh, University of Huddersfield,
United Kingdom.
Nominations and external referee reports must be
submitted to the chair of the Award Committee,
Fionn Murtagh, at fmurtagh ‘at’ acm.org, on or
before 11.59pm (EST) on February 1, 2018.
Results will be announced approximately twomonths after this submission deadline.

Japanese Classification Society elected according
to the articles of the JCS governing the election of
Executive Members. The tenure for thesemembers is from April 1, 2017 to March 31,
2019.

Fionn Murtagh

Auditors
Fumi Hayashi, Toyo Eiwa University. Michiko
Watanabe, Keio University.

•

News from CLAD
JOCLAD 2018
The XXV Annual Meeting of the Associação
Portuguesa de CLassificação e Análise de Dados(CLAD) will be held April 05-07 2018, at Escola
Naval, Base Naval de Lisboa, Alfeite, near thecity of Lisbon, on the opposite bank of Tagus
river. JOCLAD 2018 scientific program will
include plenary and thematic sessions,contributed papers and poster sessions. Shortcourses will take place April 5th. Authors of thebest research papers presented at JOCLAD 2018
will be invited to submit full papers for
publication in CLADMAp III, the next issue of
CLAD’s Book Series. The JOCLAD 2018
program and further information will soon beavailableattheconference
website,http://www.joclad.ipt.pt/joclad2018, as well as at
the CLAD website http://www.clad.pt.
Cooperation with Sister Societies
Accordingly to the Protocol Agreement ofassociate membership between CLAD andSociedade Portuguesa de Estatística, SPE, aplenary session on behalf of CLAD was presented
on 22-10-2017, during the annual SPE meeting.
Organizer was the CLAD President, José
Gonçalves Dias. During JOCLAD 2018 athematic session will be organized on behalf of
the Associação Portuguesa de Demografia, APD,
according to the Protocol Agreement of associate
membership between CLAD and APD.
Helena Bacelar-Nicolau

News from JCS(I) New Executive Members of JCS
The following list includes the new staff of the

President
Koji Kurihara, Okayama University, 1-1-1
Tsushima-naka, Kita-ku, Okayama 700-8530
Japan, kurihara@ems.okayama-u.ac.jp

Executive Committee Members
Kohei Adachi, Tadashi Imaizumi, Noboru
Ohsumi, Tatsuo Otsu, Akinori Okada, Yutaka
Kano, Takafumi Kubota, Fumitake Sakaori, Mika
Sato-Ilic, Kazuo Shigemasu, Nobuo Shimizu,
Akinobu Takeuchi, Yuki Toyoda, Atsuho
Nakayama, Yasumasa Baba, Atsuhiro Hayashi,
Masahiro Mizuta, Hiroshi Yadohisa, Kazunori
Yamaguchi,
YoshiroYamamoto,
SatoruYokoyama, Ryozo Yoshino
Secretariat Members
Secretary: Yoshiro Yamamoto, Tokai University,
yama@tokai-u.jp
General affairs: Takafumi Kubota, Tama
University, kubota@tama.ac.jp
Makoto Tomita, Tokyo Medical and Dental
University, mtomita@ism.ac.jp
Public relations: Fumitake Sakaori, Chuo
University, sakaori@math.chuo-u.ac.jp
Treasurer: Makiko Oda, National Defense
Medical College, oda@ndmc.ac.jp
The other members are Tadashi Imaizumi (TamaUniversity), Masahiro Mizuta (Hokkaido
University),
AtsuhoNakayama(TokyoMetropolitan University), Akinori Okada (TamaUniversity), Mika Sato-Ilic (University ofTsukuba), Akinobu Takeuchi (Jissen Women's
University), Yuki Toyoda (Hosei University) andHiroshi Yadohisa (Doshisha University).
(II) The 6th Japanese-German Symposium onClassification
The 6th Japanese-German Symposium onClassification was held on August 11th and 12th,2017 at Tama University, Shinagawa satellite
Campus in Tokyo, Japan. The chairperson oforganizing committee was Tadashi Imaizumi

(Tama University). The speakers and the titles of
their talks were as follows:- Ensemble methods in classification andclustering, Berthold Lausen (University ofEssex)- Applying tensor decompositions to authorname disambiguation of common Japanese
researcher names, Kei Kurakawa (National
Institute of Informatics) and Yasumasa Baba
(The Institute of Statistical Mathematics).
- Lorenz Curves, Gini index and… Bacteria,
Alfred Ultsch (University of Marburg).
- Variations of Ward method for non-Euclidean
spaces and a two-stage algorithm, Sadaaki
Miyamoto (University of Tsukuba), Yuuto
Tamura (University of Tsukuba) andYasunori Endo (University of Tsukuba).
- Cluster-Scaled Forecasting Method for HighDimension Low-Sample Size Data, Mika
Sato-illic (University of Tsukuba).
- Screening for ordinal class structures, Ludwig
Lausser (Ulm University), Lyn-Rouven
Schirra (Ulm University), Florian Schmid(Ulm University), Robin Szekely (Ulm
University) and Hans A Kestler (Ulm
University).
- Gini index penalized canonical covarianceanalysis for three-mode three-way data, Jun
Tsuchida (Doshisha University) and Hiroshi
Yadohisa (Doshisha University).
- Components, Cluster (and Correspondence):
A data driven approach to consumer behavior
segmentation, Karsten Luebke (FOM
Hochschule für Oekonomie & Management)
and Oliver Gansser (Dortmund).
- Classification of influences for SNS text data
regarding radiation, Takafumi Kubota (TamaUniversity).
- Data Science-Is the impact of Statistics
significant? Claus Weihs (TU Dortmund
University).
- Meta-Analysis
withSymbolic
Data
Approach, Masahiro Mizuta (Hokkaido
University).
- Singular Least Squares and the Analysis of
Simple Conjoint Experiments, Andreas
Geyer-Schulz (Karlsruher Institut fürTechnologie).
- “New” Techniques for Site Engineering:
Kano and Jobs-to-Be-Done Revisited, Daniel
Baier (University of Bayreuth), Franziska
Kullak* (University of Bayreuth) and Herbert
Woratschek (University of Bayreuth).
- Customer Segmentation with Qualitative

-

-

-

Comparative Analysis, Yuki Toyoda (Hosei
University).
Omni-Channel Overview-Business Trends
and Research Reviews in Marketing Science-,
Hiroyuki Tsurumi (Yokohama National
University).
Guiding supervised classification algorithms
via semantic knowledge, Hans Kestler (Ulm
University).
Study on Globalization of Japanesecompanies Based on Text Mining, Atsuho
Nakayama (Tokyo Metropolitan University)and Komoda Fumio (Saitama Gakuen
University).
Diagnostic Classification of Student’s
Knowledge States based on Their Item
Response Data, Yuan Sun (National Instituteof Informatics), Shunya Inoue (Tokyo Kasei
University) and Yi Sun (University of China
Academy of Science).

(III) The Japanese Classification Society
Symposium on “Analysis of test data”
The symposium was held on September 4th, 2017
at Nanzan University, Nagoya campus in Nagoya
City under the 2017 Japanese Joint Statistical
Meeting. The organizer, discussant and speakers
were as follows:• Organizer & Chairperson: Kumiko Shina(National Center for University Entrance
Examination)• Discussant: Takashi Murakami (Chukyo
University)• Speaker(s): Kumiko Shina (National Centerfor University Entrance Examination); Yutaro
Sakamoto (Recruit Management Solutions Co,
Ltd, Tohoku University) and Tadashi
Shibayama (Tohoku University); Fumiko
Yasuno (National Institute for Educational
Policy Research) and Hisao Miyano (National
Center for University Entrance Examination);
Takahiro Terao (Nagoya University), Hidetoki
Ishii (Nagoya University) and Hiroyuki
Noguchi (Nagoya University); Daiki Hojo
(Senshu University) and Kensuke Okada(Senshu University).
The official Web site of the 2015 Japanese Joint
Statistical
Meetingis
http://www.jfssa.jp/taikai/2017 (in Japanese).
(IV) Publication of the Journal
Volume 6 Number 1 of the Journal of theJapanese Classification Society, Data Bunseki no
Riron to Oyo [Bulletin of Data Analysis], wassuccessfully published (all papers are written in
the Japanese language).
(V) Information about the 36th Annual
Meeting of the Japanese Classification Society
The 36th Annual Meeting will be held on
December 4th and 5th, 2017 at Sapporo
Convention Center in Hokkaido. The chairpersonof the organizing committee is Masahiro Mizuta(Hokkaido
University).
Foradditional
information, please visit our website at
http://www.bunrui.jp/.
Kensuke Tanioka

News from The Classification Society
Report on CS 2017
The 2017 Classification Society Meeting washeld at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
Silicon Valley campus on June 21-24. Speakers
includedbothacademicandindustry
participants. The President's Invited Address,
given by Rob Tibshirani of Stanford University,
was on Cancer detection via the lasso andcustomized training. The plenary keynote talk,given by Michael Jordan of the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, was On Gradient-Based
Optimization:
Accelerated,
Distributed,
Asynchronous and Stochastic. We also had anumber of talks on mixture models, tree methods,
machine learning, spatial/temporal applications,and a variety of other topics. Speakers from GE,
Stitch Fix, and the Climate Corporation provided
insight into how classification is used in industry.
CS 2018
The 2018 Annual Meeting of the Classification
Society will be at Stony Brook University, Long
Island, New York from June 20-23. The
President’s Invited Address will be given by:• Charles Bouveyron, Université Nice Côted'Azur, France.
The President’s Address will be given by:• Paul McNicholas, McMaster University,
Ontario, Canada.
The other keynote lectures will be given by:• Tanzy Love, University of Rochester, New
York, US.
• Volodymyr Melnykov, The University of
Alabama, Tuscaloosa, US.
• Katrijn Van Deun, Tilburg University, The
Netherlands.

As usual, there will be a special invited session
for the Distinguished Dissertation Award. In
addition, there will also be two invited sessions:• Applications of Classificationo Justin Gross, University of Massachusetts
Amherst, US.
o Yang Tang, McMaster University, Ontario,
Canada.
• Recent Advances in Classificationo Sanjeena Dang, Binghamton University,
New York, US.
o Berthold Lausen, University of Essex, UK.
The local arrangements chair is Jim Rohlf and themembers of program committee are Jeff
Andrews, Abby Flynt, Brian Franczak, and PaulMcNicholas (chair). Contributed abstracts fortalks and posters are welcome and can besubmitted at www.theclassificationsociety.org
from January 1, 2018. The submission deadline
for contributed abstracts is April 15. The Early
Bird Registration deadline is May 15. Details
about accommodation will be posted at
www.theclassificationsociety.org in the coming
weeks. Hope to see you in New York for CS
2018!
Herbert Lee and Paul McNicholas

News from SKAD
The 26th Scientific Conference of Classification
and Data Analysis Section (SKAD) of Polish
Statistical Society (and the 31st Taxonomic
Conference) on “Classification and Data Analysis− Theory and Applicationsˮ was held between
23rd-25th October 2017 at Cracow University of
Economics. Besides SKAD, the conference wasalso organized by the Department of Statistics of
Cracow University of Economics. The
chairperson of the organizing committee wasprofessor Józef Pociecha. The scientificcommittee of the conference consisted of: Józef
Pociecha, Grażyna Dehnel, Eugeniusz Gatnar,
Krzysztof Jajuga, Krzysztof Najman, Barbara
Pawełek, Andrzej Sokołowski, Marek Walesiak.
72 participants attended the conference. Its
program included: 2 plenary sessions, 10 parallelsessions and a poster session. During theconference, 18 posters and 43 papers were
presented. Traditionally, the conference topics
covered the following fields: theory (taxonomy,
discriminant
analysis,linearordering,

multivariate statistical analysis, continuous
variables analysis, discrete variables analysis,
symbolic data analysis, data visualization), andapplications (spatial data analysis; data analysis
in finance, marketing, medicine, psychology,archaeology, etc.; computer applications ofstatistical methods).
The next Conference of Section of Classification
and Data Analysis of Polish Statistical Society“Classification and Data Analysis: Theory andApplicationsˮ will be held in September 2018.
Mateusz BaryłaNews from GfKl
ECDA 2018, the Fifth European Conferenceon Classification and Data Analysis
Paderborn, Germany, July 4-6,
http://www.ecda2018.de. Invited speakers:• NicoBeerkenwinkel,
ETH
Zürich,“Analyzing molecular tumor profiles for
precision oncology”.
• James Berger, Duke University, USA,
“Gaussian Process Emulation of Computer
Models with Massive Output”.
• Andreas Christmann, University of Bayreuth,“Kernel based methods in machine learning”.
• Jurgen Doornik, University of Oxford,“Model building in a changing world”.
• Iryna Gurevych, TU Darmstadt, “Latest Newsin Computational Argumentation: Surfing on
the Deep Learning Wave, Scuba Diving in theAbyss of Fundamental Questions”.
• Barbara Hammer, Bielefeld University,“Transfer Learning and Learning withConcept Drift”. Johannes Hartig, DIPF
Frankfurt, “Analysis of data from educational
achievement tests with generalized linear
mixed models”.
• Luc de Raedt, KU Leuven, Belgium, Title
TBA.
• Roberto Rocci, University of Rome Tor
Vergata, Italy, “Finite mixtures for
simultaneous clustering and reduction”.
• Elena Simperl, University of Southampton,“Data analysis with humans in the loop”.
• Yuan Sun, National Institute for Informatics,
Japan,“Learningoriented
diagnostic
assessment based on students' response data”.

40 years of “GfKl – Data Science Society”
On February 24, 2017, the 40th Anniversary of
GfKl was celebrated at Karlsruhe Palace. The
afternoon was opened by welcome addresses ofGeyer-Schulz (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,
KIT) (local organizer), Frank Schultmann (deanof the Faculty of Economics and Business
Administration), Berthold Lausen (University ofEssex, chairman of the GfKl) as well as ofAndrzej Sokolowski (Cracow University of
Economics, SKAD, Section on Classification andData Analysis of the Polish Statistical
Association), awarding a SKAD honorary medal
to Berthold Lausen.
Joachim Buhmann (ETH Zurich) presented thefirst scientific talk “Resilient algorithmics: Howmuch information is extracted from an algorithm
from my data?”, also discussing current
developments in the area of Big Data.
Afterwards, Manfred Wilhelm (KIT, Institute forTechnical and Polymer Chemistry) humorously
explained how alcohol invades the brain and how
to apply NMR spectroscopy to analyze wine
contents in his talk “In Vino Veritas?! Wine,health, and NMR spectroscopy”.
After a reception offering champagne and snacks,
the second part of the celebration was opened by
Tim Friede (University of Göttingen) with alecture on “Combining evidence in clinicalresearch: applications in adaptive designs andmeta-analyzes”. Then, Hans-Hermann Bock(RWTH Aachen University) reviewed the historyof the GfKl from its founding on February 12,
1977, in Frankfurt am Main to its current state in
his talk “40 years of GfKl – from Taxonomy to
Big Data” (see https://issuu.com/gfkl/docs/2017karlsruhe-40jahregfkl-vortragb).
At the end of the official part of the celebration,
the
BRCA
Data
AnalysisAward(http://www.isw.rwth-aachen.de/BRCAAward/home.pdf) was conferred to thebioinformatics scientist Corinna Ernst (University
Hospital of Cologne) by Hans Kestler (University
of Ulm) for the paper “A generalized additivemodel framework for CNV detection on multigene panels.” The day was concluded by an
unofficial meeting in the comfortable atmosphereof a nearby Spanish restaurant.
Victoria-Anne Schweigert and Claus Weihs

Cluster Analysis Benchmarking:
Two IFCS challenges
The IFCS Task Force on Benchmarking hasorganized two challenges in order to stimulate
better practice in benchmarking (performancecomparison of methods) for cluster analysis andto promote the IFCS Cluster Benchmark Data
Repository (https://ifcs.boku.ac.at/repository/).
The first challenge was to submit datasets to therepository that come with good metadata(including background information about themeaning of the data, the research questions, theaim of the clustering, and characteristics that
useful clusters should fulfill). The second
challenge was to analyze the winning dataset
from the first challenge. A key criterion in thissecond challenge was the connection of thechosen clustering methods and its results to theavailable meta-data, which the Task Force sees as
essential for a good clustering. Selected
contributions to the second challenge were
presented in two dedicated invited sessions at the
IFCS-2017 conference in Tokyo.
The first challenge was won by W. Vach andcolleagues, who submitted a dataset regarding
baseline assessment and outcome measures froma longitudinal study of adult low back pain
patients who consulted chiropractors. The
research question was rooted in a need for a better
understanding of the mechanisms underlying thevery heterogeneous condition of low back pain.
This was translated into a search of a clinicallyuseful grouping of patients (based on theirbaseline characteristics only) that could help topredict the development of low back pain throughtherapy.
This dataset was to be analyzed for the second
challenge. Six groups of contributors (H. van derHoef, F. Liu & S. Gupta & C. Tortora, M.
Greenacre, L. Phan & H. Liu & C. Tortora, V.
Makarenkov & A. Gondeau, J. Fitch & N. Khan
& C. Tortora) were invited to present theiranalyses and results in two invited sessions at
IFCS-2017 (along with an introduction of the
Benchmark Task Force, the repository, and thedataset by I. Van Mechelen and a statisticalevaluation of the submissions by C. Hennig). The
sessions were very well attended. The
contribution by F. Liu & S. Gupta & C. Tortora
was finally selected as the winner of the second

challenge by the IFCS Benchmark Task Force.
A publication on the winning dataset from thefirst challenge and on the contributions to thesecond challenge is in preparation. Overall, thechallenges were a very good experience and canhopefully contribute to stimulate good practices
in cluster analysis and cluster analysis
benchmarking. On behalf of the IFCS Task Forceon Benchmarking,Christian Hennig and Iven Van Mechelen

Fourth German-Polish Seminar on
Data Analysis and Applications
The Fourth German-Polish Seminar on Data
Analysis and Applications was held at Wroclaw
University of Economics (Poland) on September
26th, 2017. The previous seminars, being the joint
scientific meetings of GfKl and SKAD, took
place in Aachen (2009), Kraków (2011) andDresden (2013). The scientific chairmen of
seminar were Józef Pociecha (SKAD) andBerthold Lausen (GfKl). The organizational partwas performed by people from Wroclaw
University of Economics, chaired by Krzysztof
Jajuga and Anita Makowska.
35 persons participated in the seminar, including
22 from Poland and 13 from Germany. The
following papers were presented during seminar:
Andreas Geyer-Schulz (KIT Karlsruhe) –Conjoint Analysis by Generalized Least Squares:
Inference, Diagnostics, and Clustering; Andrzej
Dudek (Wroclaw University of Economics) – On
Natural Number of clusters. Bootstraping versus
Cluster Quality Indices Approach; Hans Joachim
Mucha (WIAS Berlin) – Big Data Clustering:Comparison of the Performance of a New Fast
Pre-Clustering and Subsampling; Jan W.
Owsiński, Karol Opara, Jarosław Stańczak
(System Research Institute Warsaw) – Reverse
Clustering: the Problem, the Meaning and Some
Simple Examples; Barbara Pawełek, Józef
Pociecha (Cracow University of Economics) –Problem of Time Uniformity of Financial Data in
Corporate Bankruptcy; Daniel Baier, Alexandra
Rese (University of Bayreuth) – Online-Shop Site
Engineering Using Eye Tracking, TAM, and
A/B-Tests: An Empirical Application; Katarzyna
Kuziak, Krzysztof Piontek (Wroclaw Universityof Economics) – Assessment of the Systemic
Risk in Banking Industry; Vanessa Bormann,
Matthias Gehrke, Karsten Lübke (FOMHochschule in Dortmund) – Evaluation of
selected models for Value-at-Risk calculation;
Adalbert F.X. Wilhelm (Jacobs University
Bremen) – Hybrid Image Classification using
Captions and Image Features; Michał Trzęsiok
(University of Economics in Katowice) – Neural
Networks’ Feature Extraction as a Method for
Improving Stability of Classification Trees; Eyke
Huellermeier (University of Paderborn) –Statistical Inference for Incomplete Ranking
Data: The Case of Rank-Dependent Coarsening;
Marcin Pełka (Wroclaw University of
Economics) – Analysis of Innovation in the EU
via Ensemble Symbolic Density Clustering;
Andrzej Sokołowski, Kamil Fijorek (Cracow
University of Economics) – Statistical Analysis
of Televoting at the Eurovision Song Contest;
Claus Weihs, Tanja Hernandez Rodriguez (TU
Dortmund) – Professor’s Workload; Paweł Lula,
Monika Hamerska, Urszula Cieraszewska(Cracow University of Economics) – Analysis of
Research Trends in Economic Sciences
Represented in Polish Scientific Papers.

Norway, Turkey, United Kingdom, Italy,
Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, Canada, Austria,
Spain, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Korea.
During the conference 107 papers were presented,
including the following plenary and semi-plenary
talks:• Berthold Lausen – Ensemble methods inclassification and clustering• Mirosław Szreder – Will Big Data affectopinion polls?
• Andrzej Dudek – Cluster analysis as a fieldof big data analysis• Cinza Viroli – Deep Gaussian mixture
models• Monika Papież, Sławomir Śmiech – Are
there clusters in financial assets volatility
spillover?
• Dominik Rozkrut – Challenges andopportunities of Big Data for official
statistics in Poland• Christian Hennig – Using model-based
clustering data that doesn’t follow the model,
and the number of clusters

It has been decided that the next seminar will beheld at University of Bayreuth in 2019.

The other papers were presented duringcontributed sessions, including: Clustering (3sessions), Data Analysis in Economics (5sessions), Data Analysis in Finance (4 sessions),
Data Analysis in Marketing (3 sessions), Data
Analysis in Regional Studies (3 sessions), Data
Analysis and Statistics (5 sessions), Machine
Learning (3 sessions), Data Analysis in
Biostatistics, Data Analysis in Interdisciplinary
Domain. In addition, four special sessions wereorganized: Workshop on Library and Information
Science, Socio-Economic Analysis, Challenges in
the Measurement of Economic Risk, Statistical
Challenges in the Anti-Fraud Analysis of
Customs Data.

Krzysztof Jajuga

Fourth European Conferenceon Data Analysis
The Fourth European Conference on Data
Analysis was held at Wrocław University of
Economics (Poland) on September 27-29, 2017.
The previous conferences took place in
Luxembourg (2013), Bremen (2014) andColchester (2015). This year conference wasscientific event partnered by Section on
Classification and Data Analysis of Polish
Statistical Association (SKAD), European
Association for Data Science (EuADS),
Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl) Data
Science Society, Classification and Data Analysis
Group of the Italian Statistical Society(CLADAG) and British Classification Society(BCS). The chairman of Scientific Committee
was Józef Pociecha (SKAD). The organizationalpart was performed by people from Wrocław
University of Economics, chaired by Krzysztof
Jajuga and Anita Makowska.
In the conference 140 persons participated, fromthe following countries: Poland, Germany,

The next Fifth European Conference on Data
Analysis will be held at University of Paderborn(Germany) on July 4-6, 2018.
Krzysztof Jajuga

Upcoming Conferences and Meetings
October 2017
III International Workshop on Proximity Data,
Multivariate Analysis and Classification, AMyC
2017. Annual meeting of the Multivariate
Statistics and Classification Group of the Spanish
Society of Statistics and Operations Research,University of Valladolid, Spain, October 26-27,
2017, http://www.eio.uva.es/wamyc/
December 201736th Annual Meeting of the JapaneseClassification
Society,
December
4-5,
http://www.jfssa.jp/taikai/2017
April 2018
JOCLAD 2018, the XXV Annual Meeting of the
Associação Portuguesa de CLassificação e
Análise de Dados (CLAD), April 5-7,
http://www.joclad.ipt.pt/joclad2018
June 2018
CS 2018, the annual meeting of The
Classification Society, New York, June 20-23,
www.theclassificationsociety.org
July 2018
ECDA 2018, the Fifth European Conference onClassification and Data Analysis, Paderborn,
Germany, July 4-6, http://www.ecda2018.deLooking Ahead to IFCS Newsletter
Number 57
Contributions for the forthcoming issue of the
IFCS newsletter will be due in March, 2018.
The new IFCS Publication Officer will send an
email with details of how to submit
contributions.
Thanks!
Paul McNicholas
IFCS Publication Officer